With development of digital homes and digitization of consumer electronics (CE) products themselves, increasing digital entertainment devices and home electronic appliances are emerging in homes. Connecting these home area network devices in a wired or wireless mode to form a home area network to implement functions such as content sharing and mutual control, is a digital home area network concept that the industry is conceiving and striving to realize.
To implement interworking and control of various home devices, increasing home area network devices support Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), and therefore, the home area network devices may also be referred to as UPnP devices. In a UPnP system, a user controls a home device by using a control point (CP) in the home area network. The CP uses a UPnP protocol, and may read status information of a UPnP device in the home area network by invoking a related control command (Action) of the UPnP device, and control the UPnP device to execute a corresponding operation.
To implement media content sharing between various devices in the home, the UPnP Forum establishes an audio/video (AV) standard. The AV standard defines a media server used to provide AV media resources, and a media renderer used to perform decoding and play media from the media server. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) cites the UPnP AV standard, and defines device types such as a digital media server (DMS), a digital media renderer (DMR), and a digital media player (DMP).
The DLNA Authentication Task Force (Task Force) is studying a standard for client authentication with a server. The Task Force is studying how to solve an authentication requirement of a commercial video profile (CVP), so as to achieve an objective of allowing the CVP client to play paid content that is acquired from a CVP server (for example, a set top box) and provided by an operator.
Currently, a DLNA authentication technology provides only a 2-box scenario, that is, a scenario in which a CP and a media renderer are located in a same device. In this scenario, after performing authentication with an authentication server, the CP obtains a token, which indicates that the media renderer is authorized. For a 3-box scenario, that is, a CP and a media renderer are not located in a same device; after performing authentication with an authentication server, the CP obtains a token, which only indicates that the CP is authorized. However, other media renderers are not authenticated, and authorization thereof is unknown.
Therefore, if a user wants to push target media content to other media renderers for playing, on the one hand, when the user selects to push the target media content to the other media renderers, the user does not know which media renderers are authorized to play; and on the other hand, because the other media renderers are not authenticated, it is possible that the selected media renderer cannot play the target media content selected by the user.